The problem with saying "Magic can hose you permanently, so you should be careful of using it" reminds me of my Jedi characters in my d20 Star Wars game. Jedi were headed a lightsaber and a bunch of force powers, then told that per the Jedi code, violence and force use should be a last resort.

"here are some cool toys, avoid playing with them"

I'd be willing to somehow, forgo the insanly powerful results, if I could avoid corruption.

The problem is that Gygax set our expectations with his very stable and enthusiastic play group, and Gygax's assumptions don't work for the typical gamer group.

Gygax was surrounded by enthusiastic wargamers who were willing to make huge sacrifices of time in order to advance characters. If one player dropped out, there was a waiting list. Gygax could provide very effective incentives and disincentives, particularly because he was doing it for the first time and there weren't many books written about it. The players had very few alternatives and a lot of motivation to cooperate with the DM.

The typical gaming group has to bribe its players with pitches like, "Come on, grind through the boring low levels and I'll give you a neat power for the second play session." The players have many alternatives and few reasons to cooperate with the DM.

Even if you manage to get loyal players who are in the habit of showing up every week, you have an essential problem.

Permanent damage, disfigurement, and death of the player-character are only scary if the player-character is either (a) of sentimental value or (b) irreplaceable in terms of time investment. If you really want to play out the powers of a level 11 wizard, and if you have sunk six months of free time into advancing your level 9 wizard, you're not going to take many chances with that wizard character.

However, if using those powers is a 99% risk of immediate death, and the only way to keep the character alive is to avoid using those powers, those six months of your time have been wasted. Getting a level 11 wizard and not being able to use the cool powers just means the DM was jerking you around for six months.

I have often seen a lot of DMs keep the players through several weeks of a boring campaign by slowing down advancement. Then, when the players finally get the particular powers that had been motivating them, the DM often throws up his hands because the game is supposedly unplayable at high levels.

ogbendog wrote:

I'd be willing to somehow, forgo the insanly powerful results, if I could avoid corruption.

I like to play characers who are rational and intellectual. If I were a player in a DCC game, the best class choice would probably be a Neutral cleric of Amun Tor. Their magic is not very useful, but the god is the god of riddles and mysteries, so the player-character can act out the fun of investigating the campaign world. The character's primary motivation is collecting data about a fantasy world in order to form general insights about how the fantasy world works.

Also, previous posters have suggested that ritual magic might reduce the risks, but we don't have any rules about ritual magic yet.

How about an option for "Cautious Casting"? It would take more time, or perhaps have a penalty, or both, but the cautious spellcaster can then add a bonus to the corruption roll (if one results), or maybe simply have a chance to avoid corruption altogether.

How about an option for "Cautious Casting"? It would take more time, or perhaps have a penalty, or both, but the cautious spellcaster can then add a bonus to the corruption roll (if one results), or maybe simply have a chance to avoid corruption altogether.

I don't think casters should have the option of avoiding corruption altogether. Keep magic dangerous. Having played a 5th level DCC wizard I believe it's the only balancing factor the casters have.

I'm not adverse to making Corruption just a possible outcome on the Spell Fumble table - but then it means the wayward spell is more likely to affect the rest of the party rather than just the caster - nasty!

If your caster's becoming too much of a freak for you - maybe your DM will have you questing for a 'cure/redemption' - maybe you have to switch to another patron, of another alignment, maybe renounce and defeat your own patron, - whatever it has to be epic - MAKE CORRUPTION SEED MORE ADVENTURES

How about an option for "Cautious Casting"? It would take more time, or perhaps have a penalty, or both, but the cautious spellcaster can then add a bonus to the corruption roll (if one results), or maybe simply have a chance to avoid corruption altogether.

I don't think casters should have the option of avoiding corruption altogether. Keep magic dangerous. Having played a 5th level DCC wizard I believe it's the only balancing factor the casters have.

My objection is that I see nothing in rules-as-written to prevent a caster from getting 400, or 4000 rolls on the Corruption table and surviving - albeit with lots of tentacles.

If Corruption is going to be a real danger, it must be dangerous enough to kill the caster outright. Go directly to Hell, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 tentacles.

Here's a possible mechanic: Add up all the caster's ability points. (Perhaps about 60 on average.) Every time the caster gets a Corruption roll, add 1 to the caster's Corruption total. When the Corruption total is equal to the total number of ability points, the caster dissolves into a pool of liquescence, much like Poe's Monsieur Valdemar. End of character, no resurrection possible, roll a new group of 0-level mooks.

Let us consider Cameron and Dagobert... Cameron will get to cast 6*2.5=15 spells in a day, and I expect that Dagobert will get to cast 6*4=24 spells in a day. ...After 400 castings (i.e. less than 27 days for Cameron and less than 17 days for Dagobert), I expect that each wizard will have 20 permanent Corruption effects...

Depends.

I've been in such meat-grinder campaigns in D&D, where after a year of play, someone figures out it's only been six days for the characters (who had leveled-up considerably in that time). But I don't know of any Appendix N fiction that fits that mold.

Also, items of inherent magical power may not call for Corruption chances, and may greatly mitigate the math here.

Well, my solution to this is in another thread where I posit the removal of spell levels. Some spells just have a wider range of lost/failure results.

I LOVE THIS. I mean, there's no danger of having 1st level Wizards getting gamebreaking spells. Magic is scarce and difficult to come by, so it's perfectly reasonable for the DM to decide which spells the Wiz has access to.

I would try playing with the chance of corruption as 1/20 only if casting a spell of the appropriate level for a given Wizard. If you cast something higher, chances of corruption is higher. Eg: Loki casts a 3rd level spell, but he's level 1. So if he gets any result between 1-5 (*) on the d20, he rolls on the Corruption table. (*) using this equation : (spell level)x2 -(wizard level+1)

I dare you, 1st level wizard to cast a 5th level spell, if you need a 19 to simply cast it, and on a 1-9 result you get a corruption!

PS: another way to find the same "corruption range" is to take the main success result for the spell level (ie: 11 for lvl1, 13 for lvl 2, etc..) then subtract 9+wiz level. You get exactly the same results as in the table.

If the Wizard could transfer the horrid corruption onto someone else in a ritual that would make a great case why most Wizards who lasted very long are evil selfish villains.

So we are one ritual away from one solution. Heck maybe the good guys could have one to that makes corruption fade over time or something. Maybe a good wizard makes a copy of himself out of clay and blood and transfers it into the creation.

There are tons of ways to tweek the game so that the rules reflect your perfect vision.

I really like this idea for a little less deadly magic type game. I mean still casting is bad but at least short term there is relief from the massive corruption. For a game a little closer to D&D style.

In the final version of the rules that I'm laying out right now, corruption is definitely less deadly. At higher levels, and with particularly poor rolls, it can be an impact. But in many cases, rolling a 1 results in a misfire rather than corruption; and even when it does result in corruption, there is better scaling of results - not quite so deadly or disfiguring.

As an aside, Doug just did a great corruption illustration which he recently posted on his blog...

The best solution to this, IMHO, is that the GM include areas and means in the campaign world that can undo the effects of corruption, but which require adventuring in and of themselves. A chance to mitigate effects is fine, but that mitigation should by no means be certain, and the difficulty is set by the conditions that must be met.

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